1) Yuck. It’s not original in the slightest; on first, second, and third lesson, it sounds far too familiar. You think it’s something light and silly, a pastiche of the 90s, of Dinosaur Jr and Nirvana’s blearier moments. But the more it spins, the heavier it and heavier it gets, and the more there’s a pull to the songs, and they begin to generate a real gravity of their own. They have the most beautiful momentum to them. Inside the feedback and verse-chorus-verse, there’s a tender core of something familiar delivered in such a precise way that it feels completely new and totally fresh. It’s £4 at the moment on Amazon, an absolute steal.

2) The Antlers – Burst Apart. The problem is that the opening song is so incredible that it’s all downhill from there. I Don’t Want Love is a tremendous performance, slow and confident, a damaged, inverted Feeling Good where the sound is a shimmer against a great voice. The rest of the album is still good though; soft songs that manage to be delicate but not insubstantial.

3) EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints. For one reason and another, I ended up listening to a lot of Hole this year. There’s some of Courtney’s bile to EMA’s album, but less bombast. Like Yuck, another album with great cocoons of feedback hiding pretty, sticky melodies that really fly. It started getting into my head from the first listen of the first track.

4) Let England Shake – PJ Harvey. It’s as good as everyone says. And it’s only £4. Weird and witchy, but emotional too.

5) Drake – Take Care. Not often I really get into hip-hop/r n’ b, but this is really something different. Well, it is if you skip the dreadful, one dimensional opening track, which features a joke about Asian girls that wouldn’t even pass muster on an ITV sitcom. After that though, the core of the album is bleak, sparse and unsettled. It twists and turns, doubting and believing, wrapped up in a nocturnal bleariness and creating a very specific mood and place.

And a few more that I enjoyed: Bombay Bicycle Club (and not just because I like bikes), though aside from Shuffle it all slips by a bit too easily. The War on Drugs – crap war, great band, Sbtrkt for late night working (not sure I want to remember that) and the Vaccines were tremendous fun.

Best reissue? The Smashing Pumpkins Gish and Siamese Dream. Before these, I thought Billy Corgan was determined to destroy any sense of affection his fans might have had for him (a wrestling league?!), but these reissues are sensitively done, nicely packaged and Corgan’s commentary was great.

Throughout the first couple of weeks of December I keep up a steady pattern and plug away with the commute ride, so by the time the days of the year are dwindling, the end is in sight.

The sales started early, so I bought myself some new gear to help with the final push (if anything, in addition to the year of steady riding, this has been the year of buying clothes for cycling in) – some bib tights, which the Canadienne refers to as a ‘penguin suit’, thanks to its sleek wetsuit appearance, and finally, clip-in pedals and shoes. The first use of the bib tights is on the loop out to Meopham again, with Sasha. Amazing how different the scene is from just a month ago. All the cleanness is in the sky now, silver and solid, while the roads are mucky, and the fields muddy. Bare trees, and darkness all around. Cold, cold, cold.

It’s a rush finish to 2011 at work, long days and nights, and as usual, when I am finally done for Christmas, I was slapped down straightaway by another cold. Full of it, I drive to Mum’s in Sussex on the 23rd, bike in the back, new pedals still in their box. The BHAG has become famous, so they ask me how many miles to go; I sleep and drink lemsip and when I come round on Christmas Day, her husband helps me fit the pedals, and she parcels up the Christmas cake, and in the afternoon, all three of us head out.

The route is around the South Downs, towards Ditchling. I cycle the whole way; my Mum and her husband drive to the car park for the main ride, and they stop on the road waiting for me, checking. The three of us slip through the quiet villages and stop for our cake in the wintry countryside. In the evening, when we’re back, Mum makes me tea and cooks Christmas dinner. This is how you do the things you care about: buoyed by the people around you, carried by the words and the help of the people who care about you.

And from that point, it seemed easy. The final ride was on the 28th, when I was back home. I decided to go to Eynsford, since that’s where I went to started the BHAG, back in January 2011. And I sat again in the churchyard there, opposite the ford, and thought about how far I’d come in 12 months. It was about 18 miles to Eynsford, and I needed 20.7 to hit the target, so the 2,011th mile came as I cycled out of the village towards Swanley (the point pictured, below), as the winter sun finally burned through the grey and cast its low, gold light over the sharp hedgerow branches. As I came back into London the sky was clear and pure, a peach coloured dusk dissolved in the darkening blue: one of those dusks that could equally be a dawn.

I cycled 208 miles in December, putting the total for the year at 2,023. Pretty good going, and a strong retort to those who are tempted to ask if I’ll be doing 2,012 this year, as it covers me into the next decade. I won’t be setting another mileage based cycling goal for 2012 though – as much I enjoyed the BHAG, it’s been tough and time consuming. I’m now a confident and pretty fit cyclist, and I’d like to focus not on pure mileage, but on some more interesting and longer (overnight) routes this year.

The best things about the BHAG
* Well, actually completing the goal! The BHAG was a constant companion this year, and having a clearly defined goal was great. It gave me a real reason not to stay in on a Saturday, to cycle to work or even to cycle across London for a meeting. Writing about it here on the blog was equally good, and telling people helped too – I had to see it through, and I’m amazed, in a way, how easy – or perhaps doable is better – it was.

* In terms of individual cycle rides, London to Brighton felt like a terrific achievement and I’ve seen some really beautiful Kent and Sussex countryside. The loops out to Biggin Hill and Meopham have been particularly gorgeous in terms of both views, and roads.

* I’ve also had the chance to discover London more; Jamaica Road might be unlovely, but seeing Greenwich Park change through the seasons was a treat, as was getting to zip right by St Paul’s every day.

* The best ride is in Canada, though. Cycling on an F1 race track was great fun.

The worst things about the BHAG
* I got thoroughly bored of the commute; I rode it and rode it and rode it, far more than I would have without the BHAG. It got very boring. That said, however dull it was, endless commute riding was certainly good for my fitness.

* The other downside is how much I spent on cycling clothing. I cycled a decent amount every single month, through the entire range of conditions in the UK, and quickly learned there’s nothing fun about being cold, wet or even too hot. I’ve probably spent as much on gear as I did on my bike. Again, though, the positives are that almost all the stuff I’ve bought has been good in terms of quality and suitability. Even as a novice cyclist, a few hours on the web and I was able to figure out where to invest my cash smartly.

If you’re interested in reading more, you can check out all the BHAG entries.

DECEMBER
Total miles: 208
Commutes: 7
Boris bikes: 0
Total miles cycled in 2011: 2,023

This is the month when I thought I would get to the home straight. The 11th round. The weather was good – mild, sunny often – but it’s not over. Not by a long shot. I tried some city rides at the start of the month to build up the miles, cycling from home over Blackheath to the new Brockley Market. Managed to squeeze my cycle shorts under my skinny jeans, remember my hefty D-lock, and saddle up. A typical grey Autumn day, but without the metal edge of winter; Greenwich and Blackheath were softened by piles of damp leaves, and as it’s Saturday, tons of children kicking through them. After the market, I realise my back tyre has several large bald spots, where I’ve worn the rubber down to the bone of the construction.

The next day is an absolutely perfect example of Autumn. Yellow leaves and black tarmac, woodsmoke floating through the branches, shot through with gentle sunlight. I loop out from Dartford, through Darenth and Meopham and Culverston Green.

The Kent countryside feels like a forgotten world - little villages, low stone walls with rooks flying over, partridges in the fields. It’s a great route, particularly a blast down Speedgate hill.

And then work kicks in – we launched our biggest project of the year – and the day after, it’s as if something in body remembers I am exhausted. I get a heavy cold, and my chest feels like it’s been cracked with baseball bats, and I spend the best part of two weeks in bed, having early nights, dosed up on Lemsip, echinacea, paracetamol. There are no more miles and the reason I am late writing this is, frankly, I was worried what the total was going to be. And, in fairness, 136 isn’t too bad. It leaves me with less than 200 to do in December. The only problem is that the cold carries over, and then I’m going to be involved in more time sucking work stuff. I’m going to essentially have two weeks to get it done.

Still, I’ve done that kind of mileage before. I can do it again. If I have learned anything this year it is that distance is no obstacle. It’s not to be feared. It is to be worked with. The longer the journey, the more satisfying the arrival.

NOVEMBER
Total miles: 136
Commutes: 7
Total to cycle: 196 miles.

It’s starting to get dark earlier; 7:30, 7, 6:30 so that now it’s dark when I leave work, not just when I arrive. Sometimes I find cycling at night dull; there’s a flatness to the city, a literal lack of light and shade. But there are some good rides in the dark, when it’s not just the light which has receded, but life too. There are fewer cars and busses, more deserted corners and buildings empty despite having their lights blazing. Sometimes these moments of emptiness come in the strangest places: the Bloomsbury roads around the British Museum, or right outside Canon Street station in the city. If you come to these places late enough, you feel like you’ve come after humanity entirely.

From a cycling point of view, quietness means speed, and I log some fast rides home after working late, tearing home with the tyres lifting leaves in the air. One or two rides stand out in particular, when the traffic lights all line up and the smoothness of the tyres is matched by redone tarmac and the traffic is non existent, so I can really build up the momentum.

I’ve learned the word “souplesse“ from Bella Bathurst’s excellent Bicycle Book, and these late rides often embody its values: smoothness, fluidity, flow, the bike a thin slice of white metal cleaving the dark city in two. One evening in the middle of the month, I notice it’s cold for the first time, too. The chill of the air feels thrilling and new; it’s still like silk as I ride through it, and on the A2 the traffic is backed up, so there are huge stretches of quietness: empty spaces, free of obstacles, regrets, sadness, into which I flow, the tyres buzzing. This is progress.

One place that was quiet for the first part of the month was the front of St Paul’s: then the OccupyLSX protestors arrive. On the first day, there’s a huge police presence blocking off the actual London Stock Exchange’s offices, but the protestors are pretty mild mannered. As I walk past, one offers me a hug. The camp seems busy each time I cycle past, right up to the end of the month. It will be interesting to see how they cope as the weather gets colder.

I get a taste of winter with a week in Montreal at the end of the month (you can see it in the pictures). It’s a beautiful city in the Fall, popping with bright colours and I take endless photos of the leaves, much to the Canadienne’s amusement. There’s a definite difference between North American Fall and England’s Autumn. The former is all bold colours, bright sharp and cold. The latter soft, musty and faded; red and yellow versus umber and ochre.

We cycle around Montreal on the Bixi bikes (the original Boris bikes); particularly good fun on Halloween, when I cycle out dressed as Sherlock Holmes, complete with tweed cape, deerstalker and pipe. I attracted far fewer stranger looks than I expected. And I also learned tweed is extremely warm on a bike. The Bixis help contribute to a monthly total of 195 miles this month. Now, the end is sight: 332 miles away. It sounds like a big distance, when you think about November and December being cold and dreary, but break it down, think about it day-by-day and it’s perfectly achievable. Even the longest journey is just a million moments. Every life a billion heartbeats.

OCTOBER
Total miles: 195
Commutes: 13
Boris bikes: 17 miles
Total to cycle: 332 miles

The people who can’t stop at red lights aren’t happy – they don’t have the psychological resources to be themselves, so they’re infected with this anxiety, this, “I’ve got to get going.”

- Patrick Field, in Bella Bathurst’s The Bicycle Book

When she’s gone, there are a series of beautiful mornings, the trees in Greenwich park surrounded by dropped leaves, orange and ochre shadows at every angle. When she’s gone, it’s a case of doing lots of commutes, getting through the miles and coping with the distance. The route is getting dull though, particularly the part after the park, a straight charge down the unlovely Jamaica Road, through Deptford and Bermondsey. It’s made worse by noisy roadworks, and now that the schools are back, backed up traffic, churning away slowly. I buy myself some new lights and hi-viz bands to put on my bag; the back light is particularly good, a nobbly grenade of a thing which spits out bright red light to the sides as well as backwards.

As the month draws to a close, the temperatures rise again and we’re back in summer. This is deeply confusing to the people I see when I’m waiting at red lights. They’ve already mentally adjusted so they wear wooly coats and scarves despite the bright sunshine. I have a wonderful ride on a Boris bike from Charing Cross up to Bayswater, skimming the edge of Hyde Park, under the huge trees and past the Serpentine.

168 miles is a respectable total for the month; it leaves me just over 500 to do in the remaining three months, so I’m almost exactly on target – which would be fine, but November and December have the capacity to be both busy and full of awful weather. The BHAG is in reach though.

SEPTEMBER
Total miles: 168
Commutes: 13
Boris bike: 12 miles
Total to cycle: 527 miles

Still, while the low, grey summer is a disappointment, I got the BHAG right back on track in August. Rather than relying on big rides to Westerham to bulk up my mileage, I decided to just put my head down and work.

Commute.

Commute.

And commute often.

I cycled the commute route 19 times over the whole month – 12 miles each time – taking 228 miles out of the 2,011 total I need to cycle over the whole year. I even tried cycling in every day, home to work and back again, for a week. I realise this kind of regular riding needs a different kind of fitness to one long ride like London-to-Brighton. And it is a type of fitness I don’t have. By the Friday I am crushed, my legs aching as I walk up the stairs, knee clicking ominously.

The bike is having problems too: the left crank keeps coming loose, and since it’s over a year since I bought it, I take it for a service. There’s a new bike shop round the corner from work – Fitzrovia Bicycles – and they do a great job. Riding home afterwards the bike feels great.

In addition to the endless commuting, I manage 11 miles just beetling around the city on the Boris bikes – even though the system that seemed so charming in Montreal is, in London, somehow more frustrating and graceless. I cheered myself up by visiting the Rapha sample sale; it’s great stuff (and yes, the branding and design and all that is part of it), and even better when reduced to sensible prices.

On the Bank Holiday, I finally cycle the Regents Canal as well. It’s an excellent discovery, and makes for a nice mid-range ride, shorter and more manageable than a trip out into Kent. I cycle through Charlton, then down from the top of Greenwich park to the foot tunnel, and round the Isle of Dogs towards Canary Wharf, picking up the canal near Westferry. Then it was a very pleasant cycle up through Hackney, past the moored boats at Victoria park and I stop for tea and cake at the Hackney Canal User Group pop-up cafe. I turn for home just before Islington, speeding down towards Barbican, over the river and back to waiting. Roll on September.

AUGUST
Total miles: 261
Commutes: 19
Boris bike: 11 miles
Total to cycle: 695 miles

July is supposed to be midsummer, but here in England it’s not so sure; the weather is sketchy, blowy and cool, the sun fleeting. Sasha has fixed the troubles with his road bike – fitting hand built wheels with strong spokes in place of the good-looking but fragile stock ones – so we tend to cycle back from work together. Frequent stops at The Greenwich Union break up the ride home. It’s very cycle friendly as well as having great beer.

In the middle of the month, I’m in Montreal for a week. Here, summer is sure of itself, the sun high and hot in a boundless blue sky. Parts of the city feel overgrown; the houses pull back behind porches and balconies, or retreat beneath trailing ivy and flowers. The sunlight falls gently through leaves and at night you see fireworks, or kids still in shorts and dresses, or Hassidic jews, dressed devoutly in black and deep in conversation. It is hard to believe this place spends so long under ice.

It’s a great city for cycling, crossed with cycle lanes that are often separated from the road by low concrete barriers, as opposed to just a paint line in London. It’s also the city where the Boris bikes began, only here there’s no need for a nickname to shy away from the corporate reality. The scheme is called Bixi (bicycle + taxi), and the bikes are a common sight. I tried the Boris bikes in London when they launched last summer, but in the West End found it nearly unusable, thanks to the tidal flows of commuters who made sure the flow of bikes leave the bays in a binary state: completely empty or totally full, as they move from station to office blocks and then back again.

In Montreal, it was easier: most of the time, a couple of bikes ready and waiting, and always a spot to park at the end of the journey. As well as the city, we cycled the F1 track, the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, on an island in the St Lawrence river. They put racetracks anywhere these days, dropping them onto flat and featureless land, like they’re just a black line, painted on to a few square miles of dust. They’re real estate destinations, not places. A real racetrack isn’t like that. It is a place, one that earns its name and its position on the map. It fits the land, reflects its concerns, respects its contours. Hence Monza, historic and grand folded into the gentle, regal trees of a park outside of Milan, or Spa and Hockenheim, the fast sweep through dark, whispering forests from some Mitteleurope fairy tale – and of course, Monaco, gaudy and brash, a heavy shape wrapped like a necklace around the throat of a laughing rich libertine.

There’s something egalitarian and accessible about Montreal’s circuit; there’s no entry fee, no entry gates when the race isn’t on. It’s just part of a park. It’s not a new circuit, either: the Armco has been painted and painted again, the pits seem small and there are few flashy buildings. Most of all though, it’s full of people. As we cycled round, there were others, like us, gently circulating. There were men on racing bikes wearing team Lycra matching the frame, lapping and lapping, the hard buzz of their thin tyres as they zip past, comparing their times to the cars. Couples walking in the park that surrounds the course, and in the middle of it, the noise of the Vans warped tour, surrounded by dazed rock kids in dusty black t-shirts, and on the start finish line, a greeting to the man who did it for real: salut Gilles, the man who drove a Ferrari like a snowmobile, hanging it round the corners and never wanting to give up.

Named in his honour, it is a real racetrack: an attempt to nail down the distance implict in any life, to make its journey circular, something you can practice, do over, learn the contours and of which you can say: this looks doable.

So speaking of all that, how goes the BHAG? Well, I managed to cycle 17 miles in Montreal on the Bixis, a useful contribution to the goal. Back in London, I give the Boris bikes another go: it’s still a frustrating system to use (the addition of lots of privacy and security notices to the terminals means it takes far longer to hire a bike than it should). Still, another 11 miles added, along with 10 commutes and a 40 mile loop out on Westerham hill as well. Less than 1,000 miles to go – which is great, but I’m running out of summer…

JULY
Total Miles: 188
Commutes: 10
Total to cycle: 956

In preparation for it, early in the month I cycled to my Mum’s in Hayward’s Heath to scope out the route, a fun 38 miles that takes me the now established route out to Biggin Hill, and then through a series of rudely named roads and villages (take Lusted Hall Lane towards Titsey…)

After that, there’s not much progress thanks to what seems like two weeks of rain. The day of London to Brighton arrives, and the sky has a very English summer mix of bright blue patches and big white clouds, racing high over the city. I cycle to the Clapham Common start point to meet friends and colleagues from work, wearing the special jerseys the company has got us for the day.

Jon Lipsey, the editor of Men’s Fitness and our team leader, recommended lots of wholemeal and carbs as preparation, so I made myself a bread and butter pudding and stuffed myself with it the day before. Not entirely sure it’s what he had in mind, but I survived the ride so it obviously didn’t hurt. It’s an amazing ride, tricky at the start because there’s so many riders (and there’s still London traffic to cope with), but interesting and surprisingly rural. There’s a great atmosphere, small villages with children clapping, bunting out on the way, and a real finish with people lining the seafront. Crashes and congestion, too.

And of course, at the end, there’s the Ditchling Beacon - a terrific climb, steep, twisting and tricky, and the whole time I am remembering the Lance Armstrong quote: pain is temporary, failure lasts forever. Naff, but I make it to the top without putting my feet down, the sense of achievement thrumming through my whole body. Then it’s blasting down towards Brighton, and the sight of the sea.

After a long, lazy lunch, we catch the bus back to London, and then I cycle home. By the end of it, I’d done 74 miles and feel ready to drop. Still, throw in eight commutes (96 miles on their own!), and the BHAG is looking there for the taking.

JUNE
Total Miles: 208
Commutes: 8
Total to cycle: 1,144